Ekaterina Girnyk13:58, 08.03.25

Trump has made few national security and foreign policy decisions recently that were not approved by the Kremlin.

US President Donald Trump has recently shown an increasingly strong affection and sympathy for Russian leader Vladimir Putin, The New York Times writes .

“Judging solely by Trump’s public actions in his first six weeks in office, the simple fact is that he has made few national security and foreign policy decisions that have not been approved by the Kremlin, making his position on Putin more important than ever,” the newspaper writes.

According to former CIA counterintelligence chief Susan Miller, Trump’s sympathy for the Russian president comes down to “autocratic envy” – he craves the power that Putin has to make decisions in Russia without any restrictions.

“Trump likes Putin because Putin controls his country. And Trump wants to control his country,” she said.

Trump has blamed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for starting the war and stopped sharing intelligence with Ukraine that the country desperately needs to fight Russian forces. He has also curtailed U.S. foreign aid programs that Putin has long disliked, including support for democracy in countries like Hungary that Russia is moving closer to its sphere of influence.

“Trump has justified his actions by saying they are necessary steps to bring Russia to the negotiating table, casting himself as a peace broker to end the war in Ukraine. However, so far he has been much more persistent in seeking concessions from Zelensky than from Putin,” the publication points out.

How happy are Russian officials with all this?

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov praised the Trump administration’s decisions since taking office, saying the White House’s new program “largely coincides with our vision.”

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said it was European countries, not the United States, that were responsible for many of history’s great tragedies, citing the Crusades, the Napoleonic Wars, World War I and the rise of Hitler.

As the NYT notes, Putin spent years shaping Trump’s view of Ukraine, and now there is little difference between the two leaders’ public statements about the war.

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